Construction of a new South Coast Sewage Plant is the only way to go to eliminate the smelly sewage leaks which have been affecting businesses and residents, as well as motorists and pedestrians, for the past year.
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resource Management Dr David Estwick has admitted that the current plant is inadequate and can no longer properly service the island’s South Coast.
“What I am saying is that the long-term solution is to build a plant. That is the bottom line. Patching here and patching there is not the solution,” Estwick insisted during a recent interview.
However, the minister has estimated that it might be another 12 months before the effects of the new plant are felt.
Since 2016, businesses and residents have been crying out about the foul smell caused by the leakages.
They’ve estimated that they have spent thousands of dollars retrofitting their properties to prevent the frequent sewage leaks.
Over the past months motorists and pedestrians were also affected by leakages from the manholes along Hastings and Worthing in Christ Church.
Estwick revealed that a management meeting had recently been held to find out exactly what was causing the sewage to overflow.
“The long and short of the story is this: we have an old plant where the infrastructure is crumbling, where the internal dynamics such as machinery and so on are all essentially obsolete and we are trying our best to deal with it. I will do everything in my power to build a new facility to modern specs and to make sure it is expandable to deal with the growing users on the South Coast. That is the solution.”
He said the current plant was dealing with capacity issues due to the increased numbers of hotels, restaurants and guest houses on the South Coast.
Estwick said there was no quick fix to the problem and the lengthy timeline could not be avoided.
Meanwhile, he said, engineers were looking at ways to provide some relief for those affected.
“The guys are indicating to me that they can do the retrofits, but it would probably take between eight to 12 months to do it, but it is a start that we have to make.
“In the meantime, management thinks that there are some challenges that they can find some fixes to deal with. In the meeting that we had, what came out was that they have found one or two potential areas that could have been causing the repeated problems and the engineering team is now moving to try and see if we can come up with a fix for it,” Estwick said.
He pointed out that his ministry was awaiting a response from the Ministry of Finance on the matter.
“The ministry sent some Cabinet paper to the Ministry of Finance in April, 2017, and I am waiting for comments from the Ministry of Finance in order to carry that paper to Cabinet for approval to build a new plant, which would not be a tertiary treatment plant,” he said. (RB)
